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I haven't done any serious work in Blender since 2.49b ("I've been busy" and other assorted excuses), but I just installed 2.70a after reading this topic, as you've all reminded me how much I miss this kind of thing (context info: got degree in architecture, no jobs, became software engineer instead).

My initial assessment of the interface changes are "well ****, now I have to learn it again from scratch" and "it's hard to read," the latter being the only remotely serious one. Not a big fan of black on grey, and the various section headers just don't stand out enough. Font size is a little too small on my 2560x1440 monitor as well. Upon closer inspection, this all appears to be highly customizable, but I still think they could use a better default theme.

That said, my favorite feature in Blender remains unchanged: it isn't part of the Autodesk pseudo-monopoly, and thus I don't have to sell my car (or my soul) for a copy.

To be honest, I don't really like the first picture. The space background is pretty, but beyond that I really can't tell what's going on in the image--that background is eating everything in front of it.

I'd suggest using a simplistic, highly-stylized art style--and sticking to it. You want people to think "art style" rather than "wow, lazy MSPaint graphics," and deviating from such an art style with even a single asset has a tendency to tip people's perception toward the latter, IMO. For instance, I like the rectangular cows. Combined with the rounded edges on the anthropomorphic sneaker-wearing one, the ellipse UFO, and the relatively smoothly blended ground textures, however, it's not... cohesive. If they were all rectangular or all rounded, and either all textured or all flat, I think it'd look a lot better.

Any collector would want the *real thing* anyways, so I don't really know who they're catering to.

My first thought upon seeing it was "that's really ugly, the real thing looked way better."

That said, I'd be really surprised if Nintendo didn't try to sue. They're a litigious bunch, and their entire business model these days seems to be coasting on ports and "HD remakes" of their old games. Giving people a way to play their old cartridges might dissuade them from re-buying their libraries with every new piece of Nintendo hardware, after all.

What games from 1014 are you familiar with? According to wikipedia, Chess as we know it today only dates back to the 1400's, so even that hasn't lasted a thousand years just yet. The classic Super Mario Bros is roughly 30 years old and is almost completely unknown to the younger generations (despite Nintendo's numerous, overpriced ports).

In a thousand years, I'd hope that technology will have advanced to the point that we'll all be pseudo-immortal robots colonizing space, or at least able to spend our free time in Matrix-style virtual worlds. Either way, I think we'd see 2014's entertainment about the same way we see 1014's today--we either won't know about it, won't care, or we'll think it was all hilariously crude.

If it's a several million line codebase with no documentation at all, being able to search for any on-screen text you see in the screenshot attached to the email from your boss's boss titled "fix this bug" (no message) is really the only way to figure out where to start.

So yeah, if you're already living in a nightmare, go ahead and hardcode those strings. Can't make things any worse, and the management certainly isn't going to let you take the time to make them any better. But if you're starting fresh, don't ****ing do it or I'll find you.